w a woman like her,
did you? I wonder if you understand her."

"I do understand her. You can't look at her and not see that she has
a profound capacity for suffering."

"I know."

Of course he knew. Hadn't he called her the Musa Dolorosa?

"Just because," said Julia, "she has imagination."

He had said good-bye and was going; but at the doorway he turned to
her again.

"No," he said, "you're wrong, Julia. She's not like that."

Julia arched her brows over eyes tender with compassion--compassion
for his infinite stupidity.

"Oh, my dear!" she cried, and waved him away as a creature hopeless,
impossible to help.

He closed the door and stood with his back to it, facing her.

"Well," he said, "you may be right; but before I do anything I must
be sure."

"How do you propose to make sure?"

"I shall go and see her."

"Of course," said Julia, "you'll go and see her."

V

He went on to Montagu Street, so convinced was he that Julia was
mistaken.

Freda knew well what she was going to say to him. She had chosen her
path, the highest, the farthest from the abyss. Once there she could
let herself go.

He himself led her there; he started her. He brought praises of the
gift.

Other people, he said, were beginning to rave about it now.

"I wish they wouldn't," said she. "It makes me feel so dishonest."

"Dishonest?"

"As if I'd taken something that didn't belong to me. It doesn't
belong to me."

"What doesn't?"

"It--the gift! I feel as if it had never had anything--really--to do
with me."

"Ah, that's the way to tell that you've got it."

"I know, but I don't mean that. I mean--it does belong so very much
to somebody else, that I ought almost to give it back."

He had always wondered how she did it. Now for one moment he
believed that she was about to clear up her little mystery. She was
going to tell him that she hadn't done it at all, that somebody else
had borrowed her name for some incomprehensible purpose of
concealment. She was going to make an end of Freda Farrar.

"Of course," she said, "I know you don't want it back."

"I?"

"Yes. It's really yours, you know. I should never have had it at all
if it hadn't been for you."

"I'm very glad," he said gravely, "if I've helped you."

He was thinking, "She does really rather pile it on."

Freda went piling it on more. She felt continuously that the gift
would see them through. She would hold it well before him, and turn
it round an